The quick-cutting style, though, creates a forgettable blur.
Washington Post reporter mishandles her inside access to an elite cub and draws a messy portrait of the Washington, D.C., Internet business scene.
The Capital Investors, which consists of 26 white men who are leaders of computer-related businesses headquartered around the nation’s capital, meet monthly for dinner. Founded unofficially in 1996, the club, whose most prominent member is AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case, was already losing its luster and assets when it first invited Henry to attend the November 2000 dinner. Here, she listens to their private conversations and hears presentations from leaders of new businesses soliciting cash and expertise. During dessert, CEOs of Internet and high-tech companies like Emtera, SwapDrive and MaTRICS make presentations, get peppered with questions and challenges, and occasionally leave with more than $200,000, although helpful advice is rare. Between meals, Henry rushes through portraits of Dinner Club members. James Kimsey, co-founder of AOL, is back from visiting Fidel Castro (FC has business cards), and now is off to Vietnam with President Clinton. Mario Morino, founder of a successful software company and generous philanthropist, shaped the Washington technology community. Henry uses club member Mark Warner’s successful Virginia gubernatorial campaign to frame, ineffectively, her narrative. The only memorable section is an excellent, extended chapter on MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, whose company’s stock went from $333 per share to $1. Predictably, the story winds down with other Capital Investors losing their businesses, and dinner presenters returning for more cash. The narrative does work as a casual restaurant guide for Washington (tourists take note). Always dining well with the club, Henry informally recommends Teatro Goldoni, the Capital Grille, Nora’s, and Citronelle.
The quick-cutting style, though, creates a forgettable blur.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-2215-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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